Exchange Mailbox Protection end of life

1 What is Exchange Mailbox Protection?

Exchange Mailbox Protection is a mailbox backup type that allows you to restore selected mail items. In BackupAssist v7 and v8, it appeared as a backup option called Exchange Mailbox Protection. Exchange Mailbox Protection was superseded during the BackupAssist v7 lifecycle by Exchange Granular Restore which can perform granular restores of mail items from System Protection, File Protection and File Archiving backups.

2 Why is Exchange Mailbox Protection being deprecated?

Exchange Mailbox Protection was limited by the fact that it did not allow you to use standard backup types, and it does not support newer versions of Exchange. These limitations were resolved with the introduction of Exchange Granular Restore. For these reasons, Exchange Mailbox Protection was removed as a backup option in BackupAssist v9 and will not be supported in BackupAssist v10.

3 What are the advantages of Exchange Granular Restore?

The table below shows the advantages of using Exchange Granular Restore instead of Exchange Mailbox Protection.

Feature	Exchange Mailbox Protection	Exchange Granular Restore
Exchange versions supported	2007, 2010	2007, 2010, 2013, 2016
Exchange Server authentication	Required	Not required
Special backup type	Required	Not required
Mail Preview (before restore)	No	Yes
Remote Exchange Server backup	Yes	No
Backup destination	Local disks only	As supported by backup type
Can use backup for a recovery	No	If System Protection is used

To learn more, see our Exchange Protection user guide.

4 Licensing

Exchange Mailbox Protection was enabled by the Exchange Mailbox add-on. Exchange Granular Restore is enabled by the Exchange Granular add-on, which replaces the Exchange Mailbox add-on but still allows you to use Exchange Mailbox Protection jobs. This means you will not need the change your current add-ons to use Exchange Granular Restore.

Important: because the backups used by Exchange Granular Restore do not support remote Exchange Server backups, an Exchange Granular add-on license is required for each Exchange Server that you are backing up.

5 What do I have to do if I am using Exchange Mailbox Protection?

If you are currently using Exchange Mailbox Protection, you can continue to do so with BackupAssist v8 and v9. If you want to upgrade to BackupAssist v10, you will need to recreate your backup jobs using System Protection, File Protection or File Archiving.

6 Legacy support for Exchange restores

BackupAssist v10 can restore Exchange Mailbox Protection PST backups using Exchange Granular Restore's, PST file restore option.

7 How to make your Exchange jobs compatible with v10

If you are using Exchange Mailbox Protection, follow these steps to create Exchange Server backups that can use Exchange Granular Restore.

Open your current version of BackupAssist
Create a new backup job using System Protection, File Protection or File Archiving.
Select the full Exchange Server’s VSS tick box or at least the mailbox database.
Run a test backup to make sure that your Exchange Server backup job works as intended.
Use Exchange Granular Restore to perform test restores of some mail items.

When BackupAssist v10 is released, your new Exchange Backup job and its backups will be compatible with v10 for both ongoing backups and restores.